(click to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 23, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 26, 2025
Lakeside Denny manor falls victim to religious landmark loophole
By Jean Sherrard
Turns out the mission was impossible.
Readers may recall our caper last March, attempting to visit Loch Kelden to capture one last photo before its approaching demolition. The three-story Spanish Mission Revival mansion overlooking Lake Washington had been completed in 1907 by Rolland Denny, the youngest member of the pioneer Denny Party.
We requested a final tour from the Unification Church, which had used the 1.7-acre property as a domicile and retreat since 1974. With its $6 million sale to developers still “pending,” the church turned us down.
So we took to the water. Accompanied by Rolland’s
great-grandniece Maria Denny, we boarded a cabin cruiser and, floating offshore, took “now” photos of the mansion gleaming over her shoulder.
Demolition was delayed, but sadly only by months.
Days before Christmas, we received news that the end was nigh. Mere minutes remained before the main structure of the house would be leveled. I grabbed a camera and made a bee line to Loch Kelden.
Unattended, I toured the denuded mansion, snapping photos. Soon I was joined by Aaron Blanchard, director of operations of EarthWise Architectural Salvage.
“We removed beautiful fir paneling, pocket doors,
leaded glass and stained-glass windows,” he said, along with 8-10,000 board feet of old-growth wood. EarthWise also saved the mansion’s front door, rumored to contain wood from the original 1851 Denny cabin.
“Incredibly cool,” Blanchard said, “was the horse-hair terra-cotta cornice above the door in the shape of a clamshell.” (The clamshell could be a sly reference to infant Rolland Denny’s survival, credited to Duwamish-provided clam nectar.)
After our spring caper, readers expressed shock and dismay over the pending demolition. Many asked how such a historic structure could be torn down without public input. What about city landmark status?
University of Washington architecture professor Jeffrey Karl Ochsner notes that the state Supreme Court affirmed in 1990 a claim by Seattle’s First Covenant Church that landmark designation infringed on religious freedom.
“The First Covenant ruling created a loophole in landmarks law,” Ochsner says. “Now what happens is a consecrated church building owner reaches a deal with a developer while the church is still consecrated. Then they get a demolition permit. This bypasses the landmarks process. Next the church deconsecrates and sells to the developer. The demolition permit transfers along with the property.”
For Maria Denny, the razing feels “like the loss of a family member, and it’s sad to think that a little piece of history is gone.”
Some may quarrel with “little” — in this specific case, and as an example for our city’s future.
WEB EXTRAS
Click through for our narrated 360 video featuring the demolition.
For those interested in a public discussion of the issues raised by this demolition, please join us on Feb. 4th at the Good Shepherd Center.
Also, a few last views of the mansion’s interior and exterior, minutes before destruction.
It is clear the Unification Church has lost its soul after allowing this historic structure come to such a sorrowful demise.
Thanks for your comment, Doug. Not just the Unification Church, I fear. Many churches with expensive properties will be going this route. The fate of dozens of historic structures will be on the line in years to come.
It seems the churches have found a loophole in the laws and regulations to remove these historic structures. Lets hope that groups form corporations with a church forefront to do further damage to our historical structures. Sad commentary on our current value of history. Thank you for your efforts.
Doug you have no idea what you are talking about. Since purchase the church had put at least $2 million into its restoration. Painstakingly updating and improving all the while, at times, facing enormous bigotry.
We tried for two years to find a preservation buyer. All the media we reached out to showed no interest in the story until it was too late. The building would have been lost long ago if the church hadn’t bought it. I didn’t see you stepping up to save it; no your effort was to accuse.
Were the Dennys not interested?
This makes me feel weepy. I am from an original 13 colony state where we got to visit old structures, learn history right up close. In WV where I spent time we visited an old school building now a military museum. And Absolutely beautiful churches. I think of taking a Kenyan visitor to the gorgeous Masonic structure in Des Moines and she being in awe when I told her they were demolishing it. But Seattle has a culture of disliking history or what brings memories of a Seattle not modern. Then allow designs of buildings none in future would consider worth maintaining. Demolishing what our children pass by daily or elders remember is trauma inducing. A school I govern is across from a home that when the little ones got out of school and the house was gone their lives were jolted. If not the structures protect or address childhood trauma and what it does to their developing brain.